The Truth About Being Fine

Summary: After a tragedy, Harry's unwelcoming and abusive childhood at the Dursley's comes to light to the most unlikely person during an occlumency lesson. Snape mentor.

Chapter 1

I didn’t know her.
That little Slytherin girl, the first year. The one who never came back from the
Christmas holidays. Dumbledore broke the
twisted news to the school at dinner our first night back – it had been her
family. He spoke about how bright little
Hallie had been and about child abuse and all the things no one ever talks
about.

I was a fifth year, sixteen years old, and I never thought
anything of it until then. I never
thought about the withholding of food or the days in the cupboard or endless
hours in the scorching sun or the quick slaps and backhands and on a few
special occasions, the belt. I never
thought twice. Child abuse? But some kids deserve it, like me, because
I’m not normal. I dyed the teachers hair
and grew my hair after Aunt Petunia cut it and placed a burden onto their
perfectly normal family.

Don’t get me wrong, I had asked to stay with Ron at during
summers. Actually, I had begged. Pleaded.
I dreaded that gnawing feeling in my stomach and the feeling of Uncle
Vernon’s wedding ring on my cheek. But
no one ever listened because I wasn’t normal.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
I really thought that. So I went
home to the blistering sunburns and flying spittle and degrading words, again
and again.

But then, Hallie happened.
And all of a sudden, everyone cared.
Professors told us we could come to them for anything, about anyone, and
by anyone they meant anyone’s angry fists or maybe their black leather
belts. I knew they didn’t mean me. They never do. No one ever does. I’m not normal in my Aunt and Uncle’s world
and I’m not normal in the Wizarding world, my lightening scar acts as a barrier
between me and everyone else, everyone but maybe Voldemort. And he is definitely not normal.

I didn’t say anything.
To anyone. Even when I heard some
kids, they had cracked. They told the
stories about what happened to them behind closed doors. But I didn’t because I was different and not
deserving of help and I even prided myself a little bit, about being such a
good secret keeper.

That didn’t stop my mind, though. While my lips would not speak, my mind
would. I never really thought about the
Dursley’s at school before, not unless I was still nursing bruises and welts
from their loving home. I liked to
forget about them. But with Hallie dying
and the ensuing events, they plagued me.
Memories of being locked up for days and of being gifted with a black
eye on Christmas Eve (Dudley claimed I tried to open one of his presents)
haunted me, day and night. After a few
days of this, I realized that I had an upcoming problem: occlumency.

Snape, the cruelest professor, thought it was fun to invade
my thoughts every Wednesday under the guise of occlumency lessons. I had been too busy with the mountains of OWL
homework to remember them and realize what Hallie had done to me.

She had left my most private, most sacred, most well hidden
thoughts at the front of my mind, like an open book. Snape thought I was wretched at occlumency,
but you can bet he hasn’t seen Uncle Vernon bodily throw me into my cupboard or
the one time he made me pick the belt he would beat me with (I was really in
trouble that time).

But now, these thoughts of my spoiled childhood were all my
mind wanted to consider. And I had occlumency
that night! I was worried, but I knew I
had to go, or Snape might just come kill me or steal me from my bed. Or more likely, make sure I failed my Potions
OWL so that I couldn’t become an auror.
The only thing I could do was spend the rest of the day trying to
occlude the thoughts. I looked it up, in
the library. Snape hasn’t taught me
anything, but the library has. I built
those

thoughts a little space to hide in the corner of my
mind. A space that looked remarkably
like the cupboard under the stairs.

With sweating palms and a thudding heart, I walked to the
dungeons that night, knocked on his classroom door, and was invited inside by
his stern and unwelcoming voice.

“In, Potter.”

I had scrambled in, sat down across from him, and looked at
him expectantly. He caught me off guard,
that’s what he did, when he shouted “legilimens!” without warning. Usually he took a few minutes to insult my
intelligence or degrade my parents. My
thoughts swirled past in such a violating way.
You’ll never know what legilimency really feels like, how it invades
your soul, until it happens to you.
Through the whirling, I felt it.

He had found my makeshift cupboard. And fast.

My head flashed in a quick moment in pain, before the
memories started to wind by. Slower than
a whirl. Slower than before. He was looking. That git was actually looking at these
memories, of course he was. I was sure
he was smug that he had found something my “idiotic head” had tried to hide,
desperately.

Five-year-old Harry is hit with the spatula, still hot from
the bacon it had been busy burning, over and over.

Seven-year-old Harry writes his name on one of the stairs
above his head, as he sits on his bed with a blossoming contusion on small
cheek.

Snape was still there, more oppressive now. Unwilling to leave my mind, which so desperately
wanted the greasy git gone.

Eight-year-old Harry cowers under his belt-wielding Uncle,
green eyes bright with fear and tears as he begs for forgiveness. He hadn’t meant to be on the school roof, he
really hadn’t, it just happened! His
pleas did nothing and the belt buckle flashed through the air.

Nine-year-old Harry stands, propped up by the kitchen
doorway, “Please, Aunt Petunia, I haven’t eaten for nearly three days.” The curt reply, “Freaks don’t deserve
food. Back to the flowerbeds, now!”

Twelve year old Harry stumbles away from his Uncle’s fist,
holding his eye, “And don’t you think of touching the telly again, boy!”
echoing around him.

Leave, I thought,
I pleaded. Leave me alone. You have seen
enough. You have seen too much.

Fourteen-year-old Harry looks through the bars on a dingy
window in a small room, a room with four locks on the door and a cat flap at
the bottom. A cat flap there for his measly
meals.

Sixteen-year-old Harry crosses through Platform 9 and ¾ with
his head down then walks quickly to a dark, unoccupied corner where he applies
a glamour to hide his going away gifts – a black eye and mottled cheek.

Finally, Snape pulled out of my mind. The professor was staring at me, shock and
anger written on his face. His hands
were shaking and balled into fists. I
cowed and studied the dirty classroom floor.

“Potter.”

I continued staring.

“Potter. Look at
me. Now.”

I looked at him, ashamed.
He knew my secret. No one knew my secret. And now the worst person who could possibly
know, the man who seemed to hate me from the depths of what little soul he had,
knew.

“What was that?” He inquired, his voice almost shaking, but
not really, because the dungeon bat’s voice doesn’t shake. It just doesn’t.

I scrambled for what to say, what could I say? So I said the
first thing that came to my mind – “Nothing.
It was nothing.”

“That was not nothing.”
He sounded angry now.

I shrugged. I didn’t
have anything to say to him, except maybe “fuck you”.

“Do not lie to me, Potter.
Do you want to end up like my little Slytherin? Do you want to be six feet under, Potter? Do
you?” He was demanding, and angry. At me?
I couldn’t tell. I thought he was
though, at my silence and my “stupidity”.

His little Slytherin? I was shocked – had he cared about
Hallie? Of course, he had known her
while I hadn’t. I considered it, the git
of the dungeons, a heart? A caring,
beating heart? And that’s when I
realized it, he felt responsible.
Responsible for that little girl’s death. She had been his responsibility at school and
now she would never go to school again.

“The Dursley’s won’t kill me. I’m fine, sir.”

This time, he stared at me.
Stared. And stared some more.

“Tell me, Potter, are you really that dense? You are not fine.
Not fine at all. And you are
apparently more adept at occlumency than I previously thought.”

I looked at him, than away quickly. That was almost a compliment, coming from
Snape. But he was only being kind of
nice because he knew. And I knew that.

“I’m fine.”

“Potter, your Uncle hit you on what seems to be a regular
basis. I am under the impression that
you lived in a cupboard as a young child and were familiar with the buckle end
of your Uncle’s belt as well as the feeling of hunger. You are not fine, nor have you ever been
fine.”

This time, I was angry.
Angry that he thought something was wrong with me. I was fine.
Nothing was wrong and I deserved
what they had done to me. I wasn’t like
Hallie and the other kids and I never would be.
I was different and he had to know that!

“I’m FINE! I can
handle it! You don’t have to feel
guilty, I won’t die because I never die
because I’m a freak!” I shouted at him, I really did, I was
angry. Oh so angry and scared and
cornered and ashamed and angry.

His face softened a bit, in disbelief I think. And I stopped, in disbelief as well, at the
human I saw in him right then. My chest
was heaving, my eyes were burning, my heart thudding, and everything felt so
alive and I saw it, I saw that he was real and human and breathing and hurting
over that little girl. And he cared
about me enough to be mad at me, for not telling and for thinking everything
was fine.

“Harry…”

My heart’s beats were suddenly all I could hear as it filled
up my body. Harry? Had he just called me Harry? I knew my shock was written on my face.

“You’re not a freak.
Is that what the Dursley’s always called you?”

I didn’t answer, at least not for a minute. I let the answer build up inside me until I
couldn’t bear to hold it any longer, he cared, at least right now my most hated
professor cared and I had to tell him.
Even if he never cared about me again, it was someone and it was some
time and I latched onto it.

Finally in a giant exhale of emotion, I replied, “They hated
magic.”

He looked at me, I could almost see my memories, which now
also belonged to him in his mind whirling behind his obsidian eyes.

“So they hated you?”

I looked away from him.
His human side was new and scary and weird and new. Oh Hallie, what have you done to the dungeon
bat?

“Yeah. They did.”

He nodded, gaining his composure a bit, becoming a bit more
like the original Snape. His teacher
mode was kicking in, I could tell. His
voice was still soft but less wounded.

“Did he hit you a lot?”

I shrugged, “I guess.”

“The cupboard, did you really sleep there?”

“For ten years.”

He seems to sag under the weight of this burden, while I
felt my shoulders straighten. For once,
I was not alone in this, even if only for an hour.

“And the food?”

I let out a small, sardonic laugh, “What food?”

He brought his hand to his face as he lowered his head. I was startled at this display of emotion
from such a stoic man. I felt a bit
uneasy as I watched him shake his head.
He muttered something like, “I am so sorry I failed you, you were my
best friend…”

I wrote it off because I was not about to ask him what he
was talking about. He may be more real
than ever before, but this was still Snape I was talking to.

I hesitantly asked, “Professor Snape?”

He lifted his head, a hint of pain on his face. I was genuinely surprised at how real he was,
about how upset he was.

“You won’t go back there.”

I sat up straight, surprise an inadequate word for my
feeling. I felt a burst of hope swell
inside my chest, before I quelled it. I
couldn’t get my hopes up, not like Sirius in third year. The fists had hit harder and the hunger came
quicker that summer, because I had thought, I had been sure, that I was getting
away. But I didn’t because I never would
and it made everything so much bigger and harder and more painful.

I cringed at the word as I said, “Well, no, not really. But he knows I hate it there. He never asked why.”

Snape shook his head, at Dumbledore’s inadequacies. His fists clenched again as he closed his
eyes.

“I do not care if you spend your summer holidays with me, if
he finds other placements inadequate. I
will not allow you to return to that, for lack of a more appropriate term,
hellhole.”

I grinned at Snape’s cursing and at the offer he had put on
the table. Live with Snape? I had never
even remotely considered it. But he had
showed me today that he could be real and not a total rude, demeaning git. The thought of never living with the
Dursley’s seemed too good to be true and I decided that I had to leave the
dungeons and go back to familiarity, go back to my friends, go back to people
who didn’t know how familiar with hunger I really was, before it all became too
much. For both of us.

“Wow, uh, thank you, sir.
I would love to never return to the Dursley’s, I mean, that would be
great, really.” It had been such an
awkward reply but I didn’t know what to say and I wanted to get away. “I really need to return to Gryffindor tower
though, it’s getting late…”

For a moment, Snape seemed as if he wanted to hold me back,
keep me there discussing what it was really like in the cupboard and how much Vernon
really, really hit me. Then he seemed to
be struggling, struggling quite a bit actually, as he nodded and took a step
towards me.

“You should return. I
will keep in touch.”

I nodded. His arm
gave a weird twitch and he struggled a bit more with himself before he did the
unthinkable.

He hugged me.

The amount of times an adult had hugged me could be counted
on one hand.

But Snape, I never thought he would hug anyone let alone me, his least
favorite student according to the entire school.

The embrace was quick, and I was too shocked to return the
hug. This did not seem to affect him,
but I could feel how unashamedly quick his heart was thumping. In that quick hug from a seemingly
unhuggable, unfeeling man he said something that I never forgot.

“You are not fine, Mr. Potter. But you will be.”

And he was right.

Write a Review
Did you enjoy my story? Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! Thanks,
rebelsweare

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Laraine Smith:
My only suggestion on the grammar is to use www.grammarcheck.net. I have it bookmarked on Google Chrome. I see myself in the determination in this beautiful story! I have Cerebral Palsy, and I have dreams that I have been working hard for, too! The humor made me laugh!

zoheusher20:
What more can I say? The writing style and little details drew me into the book and for the entirety of the story I was Juliet. I felt her turmoil and emotions and every trouble or triumph as they arrived. This story was very different and had quite a few little but unexpected twists that made it...

N_F_G:
This story was fantastic! It was really enjoyable, and the characters and locations felt real to me as I read the story! Celeste was an amazing character, who survived all her struggles, and I felt the author did an excellent job writing about suicide and self harm- in a sensitive, authentic mann...

Jen Lewis:
A little slow in the beginning, but once the tide came in, I was caught up in it, and couldn't escape. I read it through without stopping, literally couldn't put it down. Above all, the ending was very satisfying.

Ariel:
First book from the Author I've read, and am extremely impressed and very much satisfied that this story was a short-story, yet, filled with great writing, fantastic characters, and all I'd like is more, please. Malice, she is my favorite!!

Wendi Getz:
Very powerful and moving story! A great read, especially for young women. I loved how it pulled the reader down the slippery slope that is domestic abuse and gave us an inside view of how easy it is to end up in that situation.

csimesser1:
If you love a biker romance with a lot of drama then this book is for you. Some of the plot was very predictable but there was plenty of twists to keep you reading. I could not stop reading it

lailachupp04:
THIS NEEDS TO BE PUBLISHED I MUST MUST MUST SHOW THIS BOOK TO EVERYONE I KNOW!!!!!!I WANT TO HAVE A COPY OF IT SO BAD!!! your book was amazing and so interesting especially describing Maggie's life it reminds me of my life

Nabeel Parkar:
With a lot of twists in the story as well as a few grammatical mistakes, this novel is great. It's not an original concept, but the interpretation of this concept is the best I've seen so far. I recommend this to all willing to read and who love a good romance/fantasy story. Very good overall!!

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